Everyone has fond memories of The Jungle Book because of the Disney animated film which was arguably was the last great Disney animated film from an era of classics. Few might be aware of the allegations of racism that were aimed at the film as outlined here. But all is about to change with the release of ‘Mowgli’.
The film has been rebooted several times with a live action version and even an animated sequel which was quickly and rightly forgotten. That was until Jon Favreau’s live action / CGI fest back in 2016. It was the latest in a line of live action versions of animated classics, a tradition that was carried on with last years live action version of Beauty and the Beast. The Jungle Book did massive business making $966m worldwide. It’s success was so huge that the version ‘Mowgli’ that was being made by Andy Serkis and was to be released in Autumn 2017 was pulled and massively pushed back for release by over a year.
Rumours that there were trouble with the film surfaced and wasn’t helped by the bringing in of another director to ‘assist’ with the production. But Andy Serkis version now called ‘Mowgli’ looks far darker and much closer to the original Rudyard Kipling book. No singing bears or dancing monkeys here. This looks like a brutal coming of age film.
Andy Serkis is the mo-cap master from his ground breaking Gollum in Lord of the Rings to Caesar in the Planet of the Apes franchise via 2005’s King Kong and yet he still gets overlooked for an Oscar nomination. Anyway he’s got a load of well known actors into his London based mo-cap studio including Christian Bale (The Promise), Benedict Cumberbatch, Cate Blanchett, Tom Hollander, Peter Mullan, Naomie Harris, Eddie Marsan, and Jack Reynor deliver mo-cap performances alongside Freida Pinto, Matthew Rhys, and relative newcomer Rohan Chand.
Mowgli opens in the US and UK on October 19th.
Here’s the trailer…….
